r/marvelstudios • u/Charming_Material_61 • 1d ago
Discussion Two people who literally LOST EVERYTHING and STILL chose to do good..
There are countless characters that went through challenges, but none like them.
I will forever look up to these two individuals for what they have always done. No matter what they went through, they still chose the right path.
331
1d ago
[deleted]
61
u/thejonslaught Surtur 1d ago
I felt so bad for Spidey when I read Nick Fury's file on him in Secret War.
18
u/Gabethesonicfella 1d ago
The comic?
89
u/thejonslaught Surtur 1d ago
The 2004 (iirc) miniseries. Nick Fury runs an illegal black bag operation into Latveria using superhero assets, mindwioes everyone involved, and one year later the geopolitical consequences come knocking in Manhattan.
Jonathan Hickman was also involved in that story, so there are extensive S.H.I.E.L.D spreadsheets on the involved parties. The Spider-Man file has a comment by Fury about Parker's crushing guilt over lost loved ones makes him easy to coerce into action.
39
6
u/mrbaryonyx 1d ago
Jonathan Hickman was also involved in that story, so there are extensive S.H.I.E.L.D spreadsheets on the involved parties.
Is that true? I thought that was a long time before he got involved with Marvel
3
u/thejonslaught Surtur 1d ago
I think I may have gotten my wires crossed with Secret Warriors, which serves as a kind of sequel of Secret War. Because Bendis is listed amongst the writing credits on Secret Warriors, not the other way around.
3
u/SanctionedBaffoonery 1d ago
That was a fun mini-event that I feel like just got forgotten about pretty quickly (and overshadowed by subsequent "Secret Wars").
It was kind of playing with the same ideas a Justice League: Tower of Babel or the X-Men version with Professor X.
It also had some pretty bad ass cover art by Gabriele Dell'Otto.
1
1
1d ago
[removed] — view removed comment
1
u/AutoModerator 1d ago
Hello, /u/CaptHayfever, your post has been removed because the domain has been flagged for spam. Please message the moderators if you believe this was done in error.
I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.
1
u/CaptHayfever Hawkeye (Avengers) 1d ago
I believe this was done in error. I just found the picture that the comment above mine was talking about.
34
u/PinkyyBunnyyy 1d ago
That's what makes Spider man so special. He keeps doing the right thing even when it makes his own life harder. That's the true meaning of being a hero
0
u/JessicaLain 1d ago
Wouldn't accepting reality and not asking your wizard to memory-wipe the planet with an incredibly dangerous spell be the responsible thing to do?
10
u/CaptHayfever Hawkeye (Avengers) 1d ago
He wasn't doing it for himself; he was doing it for his friends so they wouldn't take the heat for his actions. When he went to the MIT admissions lady afterwards, he didn't even try to intercede on his own behalf, only on Ned's & MJ's.
1
u/JessicaLain 1d ago
Hmm, that's true, good point! I guess it's a mixture.
But... I'd still argue that he was ultimately running away from the responsibilities (and consequences) of his choices and actions that resulted in the whole mess.
He didn't want to live with his mistakes and rushed in to the earliest opportunity to make it all go away.
6
u/waitweightwhaite 1d ago
That actually hits on a pretty important core of Spidey as a character, I think - his view of "responsibility" is very simplistic, almost childlike, because no matter how old he gets, he's a teenager
77
u/eBICgamer2010 Zombie Hunter Spidey 1d ago
Two people with a tetralogy to their names.
19
u/robodrew 1d ago
An aside, this is the first time I'm seeing "tetralogy" instead of "quadrilogy"... and turns out tetralogy is actually the correct usage!
117
u/____mynameis____ Winter Soldier 1d ago
Before people start dunking Wanda and Jean...
These two, Thor and Peter, are also good example of how healthy family upbringing heavily influences u.
Peter, although an orphan, had two loving caring parent figures growing up. Thor had like 1500 years of being a prince prefered and spoiled by his parents. He had the perfect life.
So they had positive memories to keep themselves positive
Wanda and Jean had terrible life like most of their existence.
Wanda was born into war torn Sokovia where people were being bombed to death. Lost her parents to it at 10 years old, in front her own eyes. That fucks up ur morals and worldview.
Jean has a unstable childhood, absent parent, going from one foster home to another. Then lost her only family. So similar case as Wanda.
28
u/thatsnoodybitch 1d ago
Absolutely. The thing which is tragic about Wanda is that her doing the right thing has always brought her lower, and if someone cannot see how mentally broken/fractured she was in WandaVision, then they don’t understand why she consulted the DarkHold. She never purposely took an action to harm another person; and even if she did, idc man that’s my GOAT. Idc if she’s a hero or a villain, I think she’s great.
12
u/faldese 1d ago
I do think that's a very tragic part of Wanda's story. She thought she was doing something good for Sokovia by allying with Stucker. She thought the Avengers were evil because they represented the forces that tore her country apart. Then, whoops, Ultron. Novigrad destroyed. Dead brother.
She tries to help in Lagos, whoops, a bunch of dead people and an international incident.
She tries to help Cap, whoops, she's in a shock collar and a straight jacket, Avengers are splintered.
She finally has to personally, with her own two hands, kill the man she loves to save the universe and whoops he's back anyway and it meant absolutely nothing and the bad guy wins.
She tried to walk away from Vision's body, and her own powers were beyond her control and now there's the Hex and she's being blamed for taking him anyway.
She frees the citizens she'd been enslaving - which of course was the right thing to do - and what does she have to show for it? She has to kill her whole family again.
She tries to read a book that is supposed to help her understand her powers so she doesn't do that again, but, whoops, it drives her mad, she kills a bunch more people, and finally commits suicide to stop all of the damage her just being alive has done to the world.
1
u/BZenMojo Captain America (Cap 2) 3h ago
Absolutely. The thing which is tragic about Wanda is that her doing the right thing has always brought her lower
And her doing the wrong thing is always handwaved and forgiven. She has perverse incentives because society sees her power as some sort of entitlement to be treated better than the people she hurts. She was always going to crash out over and over again because she's always going to believe that.
12
u/N8CCRG Ghost 1d ago
Also, having someone with almost the same problems but who takes a different path makes the universe more interesting. I always think of Wanda and Peter as two sides of the same coin. Both of them are punching bags for the writers, constantly being handed heartbreak after heartbreak. Peter keeps digging deep inside and finding the will to bounce back, Wanda does too... up until she finally doesn't.
And we can go back to the end of Age of Ultron when she loses her brother and crushes Ultron's "heart" as she thinks she's about to crash and die, and we see that the darkness was there all along.
13
u/plucky-possum 1d ago
I think it’s more a good example of how there’s an inequality in how comic books handle male and female characters. They show men stoically enduring and female characters having mental breakdowns. Both of which can be interesting storylines, but they shouldn’t be more common for one gender or another.
1
u/LocoMoro 1d ago
I think you might be cherry picking. There are examples of male characters who also have mental breakdowns. Tony Stark has a mental breakdown after the trauma of the battle of new York and his defeat to thanos. Dr Strange has his mental breakdown when he tries to bring back the love of his life and fails every time. Matt Murdoch has multiple breakdowns when he's not able to control his rage through the trauma he suffers. The Punisher is one big PTSD throughout his entire comic run.
All of that, and that's just the heroes. That's not even considering the villains and all their mental breakdowns.
3
u/____mynameis____ Winter Soldier 13h ago
None of them went evil with grief and became the villain of the story. We have Wanda, Jean
Punisher is the closest example but he never hurt nice ordinary guys. He was just established as a hero but with messed up morals due to his grief.
1
u/LocoMoro 8h ago
If you're focused on MCU then yes. But in the comics you have that arc play out - ultimate reed Richards, captain hydra, red hulk and winter soldier , the beast.
It's just that the MCU hasn't portrayed many of these story lines yet
1
31
u/CarpetBeautiful5382 1d ago
You also forgot Shuri, she lost her father, and then in Wakanda Forever lost her brother and mother
18
26
10
u/thatsnoodybitch 1d ago
Yeah—every time she’s tried to help, the event had a negative outcome, regardless of her participation. When every thing goes wrong it’s hard not to feel like you’re the problem, internalize it, and get angry at your existence and existence itself. Hero and villain labels aside; she is painfully human, regardless, was given an amount of power which no one should have, and the result of being a human with that power when tragedy is added into the mix, offers a predictably tragic end. I used to work in social services and sometimes I would learn about the horror some people have survived and think to myself that they would be totally justified in destroying everything; but they don’t, and I think they are very strong for that. I make sure to tell them because no one around them knows how much they are holding it together even when they don’t want to.
6
u/F_Levitz 17h ago edited 13h ago
We all know who the original post was attempting to shade on.
So I will just point out here that Thor might seems like a virtuous paladin with so many tragedy in his life because that's the part of his story that the MCU decided to frame on.
For who knows how many thousand years he was happily serving as a spoiled prince boy for a tyrannical and genocidal regime that was the Asgardians reign over the 9 realms. Even Hela points that out herself in Thor 3.
Just remember the first thing that he decided to do when he was "offended" by the frost giants in his big boy day was going to Jotunheim and slaughter everyone.
1
u/BZenMojo Captain America (Cap 2) 3h ago
Thor is introduced as a complete shithead trying to start a war for no reason just to prove he's racially superior to his conquered and colonized subjects, so...
1
u/The_Unknown_Explorer 17h ago
There's a big difference. Thor's character development never regressed to where he was intentionally seeking conquest after the first Thor movie. Wanda found out early on in WandaVision that she was holding an entire town hostage but wouldn't have let anyone go had it not been for Vision, Billy and Tommy.
10
19
u/Appropriate_Edge5195 1d ago
https://giphy.com/gifs/MFbwT3J7EX1dO4RsCw
Not just those two!
8
u/BasedAustralhungary 1d ago
I mean while I certainly agree his arc was perfect and surprising for anyone invested on this universe since its begining, let's not forget that this is the variant that just came from trying to pull biggest joke ever (mass killing spree)
5
u/Andrew_Parkinson Falcon 1d ago
Of all the points in time they could have picked a Loki variant from, it is a bit odd they picked the movie that directly equated him with Hitler.
3
u/AndiYTDE 1d ago
He lost his entire timeline, no? After the TVA pulled him from his earth, the entire timeline got pruned if I remember correctly.
3
u/Primary_Thought_4912 1d ago
And he probably lost his mind trying to study Physics for ages, only to lose it even more once he learned it was for nothing
7
u/figgityjones Peter Parker 1d ago
You are not allowed to use that picture of Peter to give him credit.
2
3
u/Victor_6190 1d ago
Hum... They could be very good friends and maybe Thor could show up in his movie. Spidey's very strong now and they never had a relationship in comics but neither did with Jean and I loved it, so... Just imagine the action sequences DDC could direct teaming up Spider-Man with Thor.
3
u/The_Shape12985 1d ago
Most of the heroes lost everything and still chose to do good,,Like I can name not a few
3
3
u/JohnnyRelentless 1d ago
As far as we know, Thor still hasn't defeated his real nemesis, noobmaster69.
5
7
u/mrbaryonyx 1d ago
One of the big differences to me between Marvel and DC is that DC a bit too often (esp. in Multiverse stories) kind of buys into Joker logic: "everyone is a bad day away from going crazy and deciding to be evil."
The reality is that some people just aren't built that way. They do the things they do because that's their thing. They don't know how to give up. Some would argue that most people are actually like that.
11
u/alaskomah 1d ago
Why do I feel like this is a dig at Wanda 🤨
19
u/Charming_Material_61 1d ago
Absolutely not. This post is only talking about Thor and Peter. It is not posted to bash on other characters 👍
1
2
u/HypocriteHere 1d ago
Wanda, Jean, Gorr, Zemu and lots of others Rightfully so though. Struggle doesn't justify villainy.
6
u/DandurlyDarry 1d ago
These two didn't have a darkhold to influence them.
→ More replies (1)1
u/____mynameis____ Winter Soldier 1d ago
Or an uncontrollable & unpredictable reality altering power.
Thor is Wanda's position in westwiew would be him causing a lighting out of grief
And that's it.
1
u/Big_bat_chunk2475 1d ago
Vision’s Robo dick had Wanda acting unwise
2
u/-Badger3- 1d ago
But she lost her fake kids though!
1
u/1heart1totaleclipse 21h ago
She had to kill her husband and kids once. Lost all of her family in a very traumatic way. Grew up in a war-torn country. Once she thought she was at peace and had everything she wanted, she had to get rid of it.
1
u/CaptHayfever Hawkeye (Avengers) 1d ago
Real kids. She genuinely created 2 living souls that have persisted since then. Fake husband & home.
1
0
-2
u/Alpha_Shenron_01 1d ago
Wanda didn’t lose everything, she still had many friends.
Thor had friends on Earth, but rarely goes there. He barely knew the guardians before deciding to travel with them. He still chose to do good and made more friends because of it.
Peter quite literally lost everyone.
Wanda lashed out because she couldn’t control her emotions. She had friends that lived in the same city as her and were a phone call away. She chose to bottle up her emotions and lashed out on an innocent town.
After that it seemed like she came to her senses, but then she willingly read the Darkhold, either knowing it would corrupt her, or because she was too egotistical to think a book could corrupt someone as powerful as her.
Narratively it didn’t make sense to kill off Wanda, and she might not even be dead, but she definitely deserves to die.
0
u/DoomBotNotMF 1d ago
lol! TBF Wandas comparison with Thor is spot on as she has some God-tier power of sorts. But a symbiote which affected Peter in the comics almost turned him crazy
Here I am comparing power scales. Thor being a God and Wanda having that level of power to warp reality, Thor is truly amiable for being good with all that power. Peter got a wardrobe change and lost his cool
Moral to this is : power corrupts but absolutely corrupts absolutely
0
u/hero-WITHin_33 1d ago
Well for one Spiderman is a man, Thor is a God, and Wanda is a Witch… the Scarlett Witch, born to rule or destroy the world. Why is it so surprising that Wanda turned bad and Thor and Spiderman didn’t… it’s all in their DNA.
-1
2
2
2
u/Opposite_Green4942 1d ago
Poor Thor, he has no idea what’s coming, but I trust he’ll be up to the challenge
3
u/teartheworldintwo 1d ago
'We don't fight because we think we're going to win. We fight because it's the right thing to do.' - Uncle Ben in Midnight Spider-Man #1
2
u/No_Sea_8324 1d ago
Thor's arc hit different with that Ragnarok heartbreak, still giving hope after everything.
2
u/CocoaNest 1d ago edited 23h ago
Well the ones who always protect was the ones who have most losses. The ones who cares was the ones who suffer the most 🥹 I mean they value everything. Plus Thor and Peter has a good family
2
2
6
u/Tom_Stevens617 1d ago edited 1d ago
Wanda should be up there. Thor, while he has faced tragedy upon tragedy for the last 10-15 years, still got to live a life of luxury as a royal Asgardian prince for his first 1500 years
Wanda had maybe 7 years of a normal childhood before her parents were murdered and she and her brother were totured for years
29
u/Krisztian987 1d ago
Wanda became a villain tho, Thor and Spidey didnt
7
u/Tom_Stevens617 1d ago
The Darkhold corrupted her, she wasn't beyond saving if she had someone like Clint or Steve during those times.
But yes, fair enough still
→ More replies (1)19
u/Sunshine145 Spider-Man 1d ago
She wasn't corrupted in Westview
4
u/NewBr1tishEmpire 1d ago
But she fixed it in the end, to her own detriment. She was a good person by the end of the show, before the Darkhold did its Darkholding
→ More replies (3)-3
u/RadiantLindon 1d ago
.....Yes, she was. Trauma corrupts. Trauma combined with mental illness especially.
2
1
4
u/____mynameis____ Winter Soldier 1d ago
Wanda is not even a comparable example cuz her power set makes her more susceptible to doing harm, even if she doesn't intend to
Like, for eg, her grief outburst at westwiew
If Thor was in her place, it would been like a shot of lightening
And that's it. He drives away.
Wanda's case, it manifested as the sitcom westwiew. Something hard to understand and easy to get deluded about. Which heavily changes how the person reacts to it.
3
u/NathanLV 1d ago
Wanda didn't lose as much as Thor because she never had as much as he did, which isn't a dig at her, just facts.
Thor was a prince, heir to the throne, loved and celebrated by his people, wealthy in a way that makes Elon Musk look middle class. And he lost everything: his position, his family, his people, his world. He could have walked away at any point, said "I've given enough" and no one would blame. He chooses to fight.
Wanda's story is tragic for sure. Everything she had kept being taken from her. Bomb killed her parents, she joins Struckers enhancement program so she can get revenge. Ultron killed her brother. She sacrificed her love for the sake of the universe, only to watch that sacrifice be made moot when Thanos reversed time and murdered Vision in front of her. And it broke her. Once Thanos was defeated she went to Westview and retreated into a fantasy world. OK, trauma is brutal and she hurt people but she can be redeemed right? No. Instead she doubles down and uses black magic to try to kidnap a couple kids from an alternate universe and, oh yeah, murder a teenage girl to steal her power "just in case the kids I abducted get sick or something." She's not a hero.
→ More replies (13)3
u/Spider-Flash24 1d ago
Brother, she held an entire town hostage and psychologically tortured its residence before going on an unhinged murder spree across the multiverse to kill a child so she could kidnap her nonexistent children from another version of herself. She should NOT be up there. Tragedy doesn’t excuse crimes, which is why she is not in the same category of Thor and Peter. She did some heroic and sacrificial things, but she wasn’t exactly a hero when she died.
5
3
3
3
u/Usurper2000 1d ago
I mean, Thor hasn't lost everything.
He still has his people, he had Jane for a bit, and even had a daughter with her who he now raises as a father.
If anything, Thor got a life away from all the fighting and life or death stakes.
Peter, actually had nothing and needed to start from scratch with rebuilding the relationship they had prior to their memories getting erased.
18
u/Treq-S 1d ago
Thor lost his:
Dad
Mom
Brother
Sister
Best friend
Girlfriend
Half his people
Asgard
Peter lost:
Aunt
Gfs memory
Best friends memory
2
→ More replies (2)3
u/InS_Deaths 1d ago
Peter literally lost EVERYTHING bro. His identity doesn't even exist.
3
u/Talastoni 1d ago
He even lost his chance at MIT, that he earned back in the first act of NWH.
Bro can't ever catch a break. Mf probably scoffs at a KitKat.
1
2
u/NyssaBlack 1d ago
Spider-Man really hasn’t lost everything. He lost aunt may and Tony yeah, but he’s mostly just distanced himself from everything else. Ned and mj are alive and he’s back together with them. He’s got his city that loves him too. And he’s got Jean, Bruce, and the punisher. He’s been through a lot, but he’s still got a lot too. He just lost his mentors and is single now.
2
u/Disastrous-Trust5013 1d ago
Then we have Wanda murdering people left and right for her imaginary children. These two are the real deal ❤️
→ More replies (5)
2
u/Brilliant_Rub_5206 1d ago
Hard to feel sorry for Peter when it's literally his own stupidity that cost him everything.
1
u/Dr_Darawa 1d ago
Until BND wasn’t Peters movies back to back to back? I can’t remember if Thor had a time gap before endgame tho
1
1
u/Fenty_Panther 1d ago
Man, Peter could've been the baddest villain out there if he'd chosen to allow himself to be one. I'd understand his arc, honestly lol
1
1
u/GhostRider092 1d ago
In de Marvelfilms was het wel Spiderman zijn eigen schuld door foute keuzes te maken.
1
u/Red_Mammoth 1d ago
What about Bruce Banner?
First of all, the MCU hasn't really delved too deep into his upbringing, but if it's anything like some of the comics that shit gets dark.
But more importantly, after the Gamma incident and becoming the Hulk and having to constantly go on the run, he still uses his intelligence and knowledge to help people. He's not like Spider-Man or Thor; he has super-strength and invulnerability and all these powers but he explicitly can't use them to help people, and yet still manages to. He knows he's a danger to people but at the same time makes that his own burden to bear while doing what he can to aid those in need while he has literally nothing to his name.
1
u/Anyybitter 1d ago
Sometimes the hardest part isn't losing everything, it's choosing to stay a good person afterward
1
1
1
1
u/Unusual_Phase441 1d ago
Peter's growth from awkward kid to responsible hero keeps giving me chills every time
1
1
1
u/Rude_Chemical3830 1d ago
That kind of unwavering goodness is rare in a world that's always trying to strip people of their ideals.
1
1
1
1
u/wilrex777 1d ago
Y qué ganaban haciendo el mal? Si ya tenían pasado de hacer el bien pues no había sentido cambiar de bando
1
1
1
1
1
u/Any_Passage_2622 22h ago
"kid, when you grow up, you're going to be the best of us" - Captain America
1
1
1
1
u/jonjon2000_reddit 11h ago
I think you forgot the punisher. His entire family died in front of him, his best friend betrayed him, and so much more
1
1
1
1
1
u/Complete_Phrase9319 1d ago
Wanda lost her kids and husband and enslaved a whole town, but expects us to sympathize with her. ya screw her
0
u/Specialist_Rub_9860 1d ago
And there's jean and wanda. With no consequences of their action. Classic western media
1
u/Alternative_Bet6234 Ultron 1d ago edited 1d ago
Wanda: loses her kids and husband twice and dies (maybe) plus is basically cast out of society, a fugitive, and goes through mental torture and corruption.
Jean: loses her sister and is tortured in the same way she died, and she couldn’t be arrested without being experimented. Plus the actions could fuel mutant hate in the future.But sure no consequences
Also acting like the mcu isn’t full of redemption stories, literally its first movie was one. Plus with Loki, black widow, the guardians, etc
0
u/COE33isBad 1d ago
Meanwhile Jean takes an entire city hostage, kills people, harasses and traumatizes people and sexual assaults MJ.
→ More replies (1)
731
u/CreateChangetheWorld 1d ago
Peter’s character arch has been phenomenal thru his 7 MCU films. The maturing of his character has been so well done. Excellent writing.